Tag Archives: the new deal

1950 women relieved by feminists in the late 1960s and the Women’s Movement and social revolution underway. Bra burning feminists definitely alienated many from assuming further understanding of the practice. But it was a practice, a demonstrated by women who rejected the confines of their social role, their place in the family and in their communities. All women did not agree with the tactics taken by some, in fact there was quite a bit of polarity among women in the country. True liberation of limitations of sexual identity restricting women’s choices and expression had a certain amount of agreement, but expressing that statement was not always agreed upon.

The hard work of our grandparents who went to work with no health benefits, retirement or unemployment or social programs that helped the elderly, poor and needy was a result of the church and the families. There were those who didn’t identify with the process as it occurred in the late 60’s. Six million women went to work to take the jobs of the men who were sent overseas during World War II. The women then returned to their homes after the war and the men took their jobs again. Better working conditions for workers came about as a result of those women on the jobs during the war, and is seen by some as the beginning of civil rights. The New Deal brought about the soldiers returning getting VA loans for school and to purchase homes and often relocating to different parts of the country forming nuclear families where there had mostly been extended families. Now another war was happening in Viet Nam, men were drafted and dissension and protests about the war were common. Those protests allowed the women to organize and bring about the issues that crystalized in the Women’s Movement in the late 60’s.

But it must be said that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the pivotal moment that made the “injuries of sex” established by the Commission on the Status of Women in 1966, appointed by President John Kennedy, that changed the platform of what was possible for women.

Seeking change and bettering the support of families and equitable conditions in the work place have been a process voiced and advanced by women all along the way from the suffragettes, through World War II and most specifically during the Viet Nam war.

The sexual revolution had as its basis women having what Gloria Steinem termed “the right to the satisfaction and compensation of work.” Only 4% of the workers were women in 1941, but by the 1990’s, 53% of women worked outside the home. Revolution is about conflict, with and without bloodshed, dissatisfaction and a break in the cultural cohesiveness is an important factor. As well, a revolution represents a breakdown in the assumption of implied and specific beliefs and orientation by a majority to diverse and often conflicting viewpoints and standards by a minority that makes itself heard.

The Viet Nam war is credited with cracking the door for some of the changes that brought about the many classes and groups in the continuum of equality and opportunity. Women who had participated in Anti War and Civil Rights Movements had found themselves allocated to their roles as supporters. The movement that formed in 1966 was a product of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 which gave ground to the social changes the women specifically demanded. Women’s circles, women’s groups, women’s study groups that raised the consciousness of women, and men to define the practice of feminism. Equality is one aspect of feminism, social, political and economic equality for all sexes is a broader definition.

Political revolution

Betty Frieden created a movement of women who came together and created a platform for the National Organization of Women in 1970. Equal pay for equal jobs was identified and a part of the movement for many. In 1997, the Paycheck Fairness Act would be introduced by Senator Thomas Daschle of South Dakota. It would be 2013 when the Paycheck Fairness Act through the work of Lily Ledbetter.

The conditions for change as the morality was challenged around the issues of inequality have been at the center. Lines were drawn between different segments of the population all across the country producing great conflict, polarities and an environment for those conditions to be recognized as core to new laws, new identities and new practices. They happened in families, in communities, in neighborhoods. Those changes took some time and were fostered by the relentless commitment by the women and men who took the challenges on.

Around the country, Ivy League and State Universities came to the streets in protest of the war, and in support of Civil Rights. Women came together, as they had from the days of the Suffragettes and before, and changed their own consciousness about power and the sharing of the benefits economically and socially. Discontent, anger and revolting against the assumed practices of state and national government are what the generations before us gave to this generation. Women’s ability to choose their destiny over their biology is often seen as a consequence of the birth control law in 1964, the right to choose in 1973 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

How was this being lived through by many women at that time? Their stories give a fuller picture of that experience. But it is critical that recognition is given to the process of freedom and liberation of women now in 2014 because in 40 states women’s rights are being challenged. To know that the freedom women have today is a benefit that comes from that generation, the Margaret Sanger’s, the Bella Abzug’s, the Jane Fonda’s is important. What we have comes from a generation who made the demands that produced the changes we enjoy, and we must be responsible to carry forward those gains to our granddaughters and theirs.

Against the State, AGainst the church, against the silence of the medical profession, against the machinery of dead institutions of the past, the woman of today arises.

Margaret Sanger 1940

WORLD WAR II-the New Deal and birth control

For the women born in 1940, sex was dangerous. There was no support for choosing to be pregnant or not. Sixteen million men and women were in World War II and 8 out of 10 high school graduates were in the military service. Jobs needed at the shipyards, in the farms and the family businesses, such as my grandfather’s gas and oil business, were managed and run by 600,000 women until the war ended and the men returned. The New Deal had not come about by President Roosevelt, and so the women and children depended on the extended kin and family and the church as support to them. There was 4% divorce at that time, and mostly the husband, occasionally the wife left the family and disappeared and were never heard from again.

After the war, 28.6% women worked out of the home, and there was a mixture as people lef their families of origin during the war and then after with the use of the VA loan and the VA bill for college. Under FDR and the New Deal, the single family credit and social welfare gave a basis of support for the nuclear family that emerged post World War II. In general, women did not go to college, drive or own property, serve on juries or lease apartments. But for the women who did attend college, Home Economics was a major and a minor course considered appropriate. Feminism, if identified or spoken of, was not a thread throughout the culture and its meaning to most was ambiguous, related to a few women and men who held a standard of equality as a social good, as well as an advance for women. The pejorative word attributed to women at the time was to point out the lack of what was considered feminine graces and value.

Sexuality studies

It would be the case that Freud studied the sexuality of women relative to their function in producing children and being a responsive partner to their husbands. Kinsey and Masters and Johnson took the study of the function of sexuality in the lives of men and women, using scientific methods to measure effects of sexuality, function and dysfunction for both male and female. But the topic of women’s desire and the emotional content relative to women and their sexuality would be considered much after women had access to birth control in 1964, Civil Rights and Roe VS Wade in 1973.

The Mystique and the pill

The consciousness and the history of women’s sexuality evolved from the early days of Margaret Sanger raised the issue of comstockery. Women being used to bare children to work on the farms providing their own free labor. Then in 1951 at age 72, Margaret Sanger got a small grant for Gregory Pincus and the Worchester Foundation to research the process of ovulation with injections of progesterone that prohibited ovulation and pregnancy. G. D. Searle also engaged in the process of the study of progesterone to address birth control. However, it was Carl Djerassi in Mexico City who created the progesterone pill. Again, the focus for women to be in control of their ovulation to manage their family size was a new idea whose time had come because of the relentless and passionate work of Margaret Sanger for over 40 years. For most women, the issues around their sexuality were contained in the effort to be pregnant when unable to conceive, or the attempt to get help from their family doctors to monitor their cycles and pregnancies.

By 1961, birth control was still illegal in Connecticut but Dr. C. Lee Buxton, the Chairman of the Yale Medical School of Obstetrics and Gynecology, but finding a way to help women conceive was very much the effort of the medical community. In the process of identifying the means to enhance potential pregnancy through progesterone, the unintentional consequence was the established knowledge that ovulation could be monitored and managed. Women talked to their doctors to get the news of the availability of birth control pills. By 1963, 1.2 million American women used the pill. By 1967 12.5 million women world wide would use the pill for birth control. It would be in 1972, that the federal government ruled that the states could not prohibit unmarried women from the use of the pill for birth control.

But what did women want in the bedroom and out of the bedroom was the question that now came up in the conversation. In 1963, the best seller book written by Betty Friedan, “The Feminine Mystique” began a conversation among women, in pairs, in groups and ultimately in a movement about this intimate part of their lives and how it connected to their personal liberty. Cheryl Hite and the Hite Report, Erica Jung and Fear of Flying also created a new awareness for women about themselves. They talked with each other and validated experiences about their own sexuality, their desires, their feelings about their sexuality. They did not take this conversation to authorities such as doctors and experts. Even in the realm of sexuality, the communication between women about their lives has been a basis for changes in the identity and behavior chosen by some. Always woman to woman there has been the igniting and inspiration to fulfill their commitment to liberty, deepened by their exposure to each other from the days of the Suffragettes to the world we live in today.

This shift in culture, in knowledge and practice of women determining their choices in their area of their sexuality was not entirely welcome by all women and a great deal of society considered the consequences of this social change. Newspapers and magazines featured articles about the threats to the family in giving women more choices about their sex lives. The perceived threat was that women would be like men with this new freedom and would in their freedom challenge current morality and standards.

The New Deal also changed the family structure. Prior to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s social security, aid to children, and social services, family and only family and church were responsive to concerns, difficulties and finances of how people took care of themselves. With the New Deal, and World War II’s Veteran’s Loans, a new middle class would result with new homes and the ability to gain access to middle class through the VA educational benefit. The individual could function outside of the group, and mobilize toward a new concept of the single family unit.

WHERE WE LIVE

While concern for a new society that might result from freeing women of the constraints prior to birth control, a deep divide among women who didn’t identify with the strident provocative tone of the Women’s Movement in the late 60’s provoked a schism, and had the women’s movement ultimately lost impact over time. The polarities among the women, in families, in social groups, in colleges drove the national conversation further into conflict. 1973 would widen the gap even further with the Roe VS Wade decision. Just as today in the current political atmosphere, there is challenge and conflict over the value of Planned Parenthood over 40 years later, and women choosing their destiny. Further, the freedom of women and their choices are being challenged in over 40 states within the nation who are attempting to go back in time and bring back the constraints, restrictions to women’s ability to choose to bear children.

The new family, the new woman and the new social consciousness resulting from the 1970’s has 41% of women being the breadwinner in their families. Women are now able to conceive with a donor rather than a partner. The choice to marry is not a necessity for survival, parenting or sustaining a livelihood or being part of a community. Clusters of communities based on interests are a common core to many lives, not at the exclusion of family, but in addition. 2013 was reported by PEW research to be the first year that the majority of the population held the status of not married. A new group identified are individuals who live with one or more unrelated people. The future has taken power not just to women in life choices, but clearly to men and women of all ages. The New Deal and birth control opened these doors to individual choice and destiny.